Wednesday Bitchery!

Today's bitchery is about standardized testing, as I am prone to complain about it at the end of every quarter. Specifically, my district's testing. Specifically, the 7th grade test for 2nd quarter. The tests always contain multiple mistakes. For example, the 7th grade test I am administering has one question that lists the same answer choice for A and B. That same test has pattern questions, and one is to find the next two terms of the pattern. Later on in the test, another question lists the exact same pattern, including one of the missing terms, and asks the students to identify the pattern. Now, whether or not these kids will have their shit together enough to realize that the 2nd problem gives away the answer to the 1st is questionable. All it does is make the results of those 3 questions invalid. So I told the curriculum person at my school that those 3 items were invalid, and he didn't know what I meant. I had to explain to him that on those 3 items, we won't know whether the kids got it right because the test gives the answers away, or they got it right because they knew the content. I don't expect the average person to understand this... I do expect the curriculum specialist to already know it. Why is it that he is in a position of authority and I know more about testing than he does??? The 8th grade test has five invalid items. It wouldn't be a big deal except that we send kids to summer school based on the results of this test. If there are 45 questions, and 5 of them are bad, then statistically our error margin for sending kids to reteach is 10%. Kind of high, especially if it were my kid. I probably shouldn't even be talking about it, because I really don't want the parents to find out. But my GODDESS, if this isn't worthy of a bitchery, then I don't know what is.